


Code Blue in Didcot

by Senji



Category: Laundry - Charles Stross
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 21:04:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/300027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Senji/pseuds/Senji
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even the dulcet tones of the JesusPhone are a shock when heard at 3am in the rural wilds near Milton Keynes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Code Blue in Didcot

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tel/gifts).



Even the dulcet tones of the JesusPhone are a shock when heard at 3am in the rural wilds near Milton Keynes which is why I had mine on silent and why, when an oddly discordant alert came from my bag, I jumped in shock and overset the theodolite I was working with.

It was a flash SMS from Angleton, "CODE BLUE. YOUR B AND B. TEN MINUTES." which left me just enough time to pack up my geomancy kit and jog back to the village before the car arrived. As always I was rather impressed at the impassivity of the young policeman driving it, even in the face of picking up a middle-aged bureaucrat with surveyor's equipment in a rural village at 3am. I'd asked a Met officer about this last year and he'd told me I wasn't even the tenth strangest thing he'd seen that year.

After I'd jumped in the car he passed me a printout and backed out with all the haste of the young and immortal. The printout was a fairly routine-looking dispatch notice requiring, essentially, a civil service taxi run from the middle of nowhere (Milton Keynes) to the middle of nowhere (Didcot) complete with 6 digit UTM coordinates. Quite why they felt the need for metre-accuracy I don't know, yet more civil service madness. At the bottom was the note intended for me: "PASSWORD: STEPHENSON".

Pulling out the JesusPhone in the vain hope of signal so I could check the office intranet I discovered a new application had appeared; The Brain must have been at it again. This application asked me for thumb-print and password then prompted for headphones. On putting those in the video player started automatically.

The clip started with the standard security warning "…if you aren't absolutely sure you are cleared for this information stop this tape in the next 10 seconds and contact your security officer for debriefing…" before fading through a keyed Langford parrot — which bounced off my protections — to a scene that would be familiar to a million daytime TV viewers: Angleton on a small floating British Isles.

Well, hopefully a million British Citizens wouldn't recognise Angleton, but the set was practically iconic and I briefly wondered how many games of golf Andy had had to play in order to get access to it; my woolgathering was interrupted by Angleton demonstrating his usual ability at mind-reading.

"You don't need to know Bob. Since you are accessing this recording something has gone wrong with one of our transport trains. Depending on how you have received this you may have additional information about the situation available, up to and including a tailored expert system. Nonetheless I am here to present an overview of the network. If you were not previously you are now cleared for BRUNEL HADRIAN BLUE and BRUNEL HADRIAN GREEN."

"Our primary storage site for moderate to harmful entities is a secure facility in a castle near Inverness. During the early 1950s a spur line was constructed to service the facility and rail became the primary method of transportation to and from it. Within Scotland the route mostly avoids any Sites of Special Spectral Interest and detours through some avoiding loops to miss major population centres. It gets a little problematic as it passes through southern Scotland but the large quantity of regular rail traffic in that reason has mostly desensitised any remains of druidic practices there."

As Angleton speaks the sections of track that he's talking are overlaid on the image with the kind of post-production editing that the BBC were proud of in the 1980s, probably a result of Pinky using a light pen in the recording studio.

"South of the border the situation becomes more problematic. The current preferred route, with the primary intent of avoiding the population and psychic nexus in Birmingham, runs down the west side of the country, skirting Liverpool and Manchester, before joining Southern's tracks at Didcot from where it can be routed across the North of London to our depot in Homerton, or to Ashford for onwards transit via the Channel Tunnel Link.

"As you probably know by now the government and Network Rail are currently working on planning a new 'High Speed' rail route across the country and with our input we should be able to produce a safe and shielded route through Central England with good connections, both to the new Crossrail for access to our main facility, and to the North London and CTRL lines."

I groaned, since the current phase of Laundry input involved moving surveyors marks overnight to avoid the worst hotspots remaining on the route.

"Unfortunately even in the best projections this line will not be completed before CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN so we have to continue running services on the old route which relies on forethought, planning, careful procedure, and at the last ditch personal oversight. With Boris deployed abroad the job of emergency oversight falls to you."

And with that hopeful note the video closed with a brief credit sequence confirming my belief about the perpetrators:

`Staring: James Angleton - Himself`   
`COPYRIGHT MMIX Pinky and The Brain`

Back on the Applications Menu was now another new icon — Expert System — which I set about interrogating, a task made harder by the JesusPhone's on-screen keyboard which appears to have been designed to maximise the change of making mistakes.

`> Nature of emergency?  
Train Derailed.`

`> Has containment been breached?  
Unknown at this time.`

`> What was being shipped?  
Supplied password does not indicate any entity classified at a threat level of orange or above.`

`> How can I find out what was being shipped?  
Please present this system with first hand observations in the event of a containment breach and this system will attempt to identify the entity.`

Not exactly the most helpful of expert systems, but since all the better systems I'd encountered had involved bound entities, well, lets just say I was happy to be avoiding those in something I regularly put in my trouser pockets.

By the time we'd reached the incident site there was an orange-and-black police cordon set up, with nuclear warning signs that would have been serious overkill for an actual BR Nuclear Flask, but might be insufficient for some of the things we might be transporting. A serious-looking middle aged officer met the car and asked to see my ID,

"No, not that, your real ID. Thanks Mr … Howard. Your office weren't able to give us any details but they did say nothing particularly dangerous was due to be transported so I went for the standard perimeter."

I relaxed slightly. "Nothing particularly dangerous" didn't rule out quite a bit of danger to me, but at least I wouldn't be worrying about the residents of sleepy Didcot.

"Is there anything else I need to know?"

"The driver and load manager are fine, they're in one of our cars, the loco has been safed, and we've closed this section of the line. Oh, and I've got a case for you, if you could come with me. I'll need you to sign to say I handed it over still sealed."

The case turned out to be a rather non-standard Laundry field kit. The seal — in wax, an impression of a half-crown — proclaimed it to have been sealed in the 1960s. I signed for the case and headed halfway across the field to catalogue the contents out of sight of the civilians. Very little of it looked useful, most had been surpassed by The Brain's box of tricks on the JesusPhone, but that left a small HoG (pigeon probably), a vacuum flask of blessed Lourdes water, half a dozen crocodile clips, and ten to twenty metres of fairly thick electrical cable.

Approaching the train I saw that the engine — a distinctive class 55 Deltic; unusual, but I was sure there was some good reason for it — had just slipped off the rails and was still upright, as was the generator van behind it, but the flask car had overturned and the roof was off. Methodically I checked the generator — still turning over but practically on idle — and the cabling to the flask — stretched but fine — before turning to the flask car. Immediate inspection showed it to be one of the two "low budget" imitations of a Nuclear Flask that the bean-counters had insisted on for the lower risk entities — a genuine flask wouldn't have collapsed so easily.

Upon shining my torch into the gap opened up by the missing roof however I was briefly blinded by reflected light, and then surprised to see that the mirror-walled interior was, firstly, larger than the exterior and, secondly, had a door in the floor, or I guess that should be wall, with no sign of any contained entity. I fed this information to the system I was rapidly coming to categorise as 'inexpert' only to have it tell me

`Information insufficient for diagnosis. Interior probably safe. Proceed with caution.`

Which wasn't exactly what I'd call _reassuring_ but….

The improvised entrance was a bit tight, but inside there was a small room, slightly larger than a closet or about the same size as a Laundry non-management office. There were two oddities about it; firstly there was a large electrical distribution board on one wall with two high tension cables running most of the way to the door, and secondly the walls were made of a silvery metal which I think might actually have been silver. The interior of this compartment should have been lead lined, not silver. Oh, and of course, it should only be about a meter across and not have an interior door. The distribution board was presumably hooked up to the generator car, which suggested that something important further ought to be hooked up to it.

The door looked like a relic from a submarine, or a bad spy movie, with a giant wheel engaging locks at top, bottom, and both sides. Gingerly I opened it and looked into the next room. Or rather the corridor. If I never have to walk down a lead lined corridor with doors that open straight onto further walls of lead then that will be too soon, let me tell you. At the far end, five doors down, was another door like the one I'd entered by, only made of dull lead to suit the decor of the corridor.

Beyond that door was more like what I'd been expecting in the first place, if slightly larger. A lead-lined room, maybe three metres on a side; something that looked like an electrical distribution point on one wall but wasn't, at least not unless you liked using lead as an insulator and ducted lead cabling; and in the centre of the room a small pedestal surmounted by what only took me a few seconds and a lot of experience of Pinky and The Brain to recognise as a giant electromagnet (not operating). Within where the field of the electromagnet should be was a small, approximately dodecahedral, piece of artwork.

I got a couple of shots of it with the JesusPhone's camera, then dragged the better of the two into the Expert System for analysis.

`ENTITY IDENTIFICATION CONFIRMED`

`Containment Instructions for object ESCHER MAD HATTER SCP-184-C  
CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET SCP-184-C, [REDACTED] "US Black Chamber", June [REDACTED]  
CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET ESCHER MAD HATTER, Ministry of Defence, 17 September 2005.`

`Object EMH is at all times to be contained within an electromagnetic field of strength at least one tenth (0.1) Tesla.`

`Wherever possible object EMH is to be kept in the open at least nine (9) Metres from any containing wall, and without any containing roof.`

`Should this not be practical, for example during transportation, object EMH should be subjected to an electromagnetic field of strength at least one (1) Tesla.`

`In the event of containment breach non-essential personnel must retreat into prepared bunkers, or to a distance of no less than ninety-two (92) Metres from object EMH.`

`If containment is breached for more than one (1) hour then a clean-up team will need to process the site of containment breach as per document ESCHER MAD HATTER 17.1 before non-essential personnel can return to the vicinity of the object.`

Well, that seemed fairly simple. Well, except for the part where I had to reconnect an electromagnet that was now some distance from the power source. At least the cable in the field kit, no doubt intended for field summonings, should be sufficiently for the power involved. Clip, clip, and a quick check — yes the electromagnet takes AC power so polarity doesn't matter — and start reeling the cable out backwards towards the entrance.

Hmm, wait, I was sure there were five doors in the corridor when I arrived, now there were definitely six. It's getting longer. Fuck. The cable gives out just before the door, and the cables on the other side don't quite reach it. I clambered out of the flask and ran to the police cars shouting, after all the only other cabling available here was ducted lead and I wouldn't trust that with a high tension supply.

"Ahoy there! You got any electric cables?"

Blank looks.

"Jump leads?"

Thankfully that got them moving, and all three cars had a set. I must have looked a sight running back across the field with cables waving behind me like the tails of a kitsune, but appearances were the last thing on my mind. Hurriedly I connected up the jump leads and was about to make the final connection when a horrible thought dawned on me — I'd been about to place my body across a high tension power supply, something that generally carries a high chance of fatality. I'm sure the Laundry has an ISO 9000:2001 procedure for this situation, but no-one had trained me on it, and besides which I didn't have any of the appropriate equipment. What I did have was a 1960s briefcase (impromptu insulation between my feet and the ground), good plastic-soled shoes, and a little ingenuity.

I attached the two remaining crocodile clips to the handle of the briefcase and balanced one end of the cable on that then took a deep breath, my life in my hands, and the clip on the other cable and firmly connected the two together one-handed (right hand, it's further from the heart), jumping backwards off the briefcase as the sparking of electricity flowing started up.

I sat on the unreal floor of that corridor for maybe the next ten minutes as my heart slowed back to the normal pace and the sense of malaise I'd barely noticed seeped out of the atmosphere, then staggered back out of the Flask to report in with an SMS to Andy "Situation handled. Will need dry cleaners. Bob."

When the clean-up crew arrived I was sitting on the flask, mentally composing this chapter of my memoirs, and half-dreading the inevitable debrief with Angleton's typewriter.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm afraid the story wanted the fade out rather than the debrief, so I hope there's sufficient Angleton in there.
> 
> Also, with thanks to the SCP foundation...


End file.
